Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
ity, in comparison with a few Fojas species that were widely distributed across the northern
mountain ranges of New Guinea.
The combined data on mammals, birds, and amphibians led to some important conclusions.
First, the Foja range clearly emerged as one of the world's centers of mountain-dwelling spe-
cies found nowhere else on Earth. Second, its fauna is a wonderful example of localized spe-
ciation fashioned by geologic processes. Isolation and speciation, again, are engines of rarity.
Of course, the Foja expedition still leaves lots of blank pages to fill in about nature without
humans. The costs and logistics of an expedition limit researchers such as Bruce Beehler to
short-term visits, even though long-term studies are required to unravel the patterns of rar-
ity. Until permanent research camps are established, insights into patterns of rarity in places
without humans will be mined slowly. Thus the paradox of accessibility: if upland forests
were more open to biologists, we might know more about rarity and abundance for all the
vertebrates, yet if they were more reachable, the vertebrates would likely be gone. Two return
visits to the Fojas in 2006 and 2009 by Bruce and colleagues also offered new data. To cite
one example, the scientists encountered the golden-mantled tree kangaroo only three times in
three trips—that is rare by any measure. On the second trip they never located that species,
nor did the Papasena hunternaturalists who went out in search of it. The echidna was not seen
on the final two trips—not once.
Places such as the Foja Mountains are already quite rare globally and will remain so. The
range covers more than 3,000 square kilometers of untouched old-growth tropical forest sans
humans. While such are the places of naturalists' dreams, the Foja natural experiment is im-
possible to replicate in many places in the twenty-first century. One of the best examples of
what might be called “restored isolation,” though, comes from across the island. From 1998
to 2008, Jared Diamond spent time surveying an area in Papua New Guinea's Kikori River
valley, where Chevron has built a 171-kilometer pipeline to ship oil from an inland mountain
valley to the coast. The pipeline road was gated to keep intruders out of this vast wild land-
scape. The result was a reverse experiment in recovery of the native fauna. Diamond noted
species that had become common again, such as the southern cassowary, hornbills, birds of
paradise, some of the giant pigeons, parrots, tree kangaroos, and hundreds of species of the
forest interior, all of which normally disappear once hunters gain access. As much as the
guns-and-fences approach to conservation is dismissed by so many these days, the Chev-
ron Kikori experiment illustrates how once rare species can recover with strict protection.
Restricting whole landscapes, as in Kikori, however, is neither practical nor ethical and cer-
tainly is not affordable unless financed and policed by, for example, a major multinational
energy company.
In truth, the Foja Mountains are well guarded by the Kwerba and Papasena, who control
access. This range is their patrimony and their most important source of wealth—timber, pure
water, meat, medicinal plants, even bird of paradise feathers—and they will not be giving it
